Another word for change...
We think that the world is made of the difference between objects and events, between stones and kisses, but even a stone is just a long unfolding. A kiss that lasts for millennia. A love story that began with planetary bodies. Colliding and coalescing. Meeting and melting. Setting off a continual cycle. Heat and time and weather and pressure and change.
"Change is what a story is", Erin Morgenstern says. Change is what we are. After all, what is a story that doesn't change? What is a life that doesn't alter, that doesn't falter? That doesn't shift, crest, crash or fade? Is a life still a story, is a story still alive, if it is stilled and unmoving, if it remains the same?
It occurs in subtle shifts. Gradually over time. Removal. Transport. Deposition. Gradients and slow abrasions. Subplots and fault lines. Minute fluctuations that start to mean something different, a little less, a little more, each time. The repercussions are even slighter. They take even longer to see. Understanding is observance, vigilance. The will and ability to sit, watch, listen, learn, and wait...
"[N]uance matters", Seth Godin says, it "requires patience, insight and awareness of the details." The science of strata. Particle by particle stacking up. Forming rows. Forming lines. Bedded and superimposed.
We are never just one thing. Neither are our stories. Neither are our lives. We are fractures and fissures. Sedimentary geology. A grain made of grains. Verbs confused as nouns. Systems confused as names. The magic is in finding how it all fits, how everything discordant coheres. Where the story starts and where the story ends. The ways in which it continues to change.
Every story ends. Everything comes to a close. Are we brave enough to let it, to let it go, to let it be what it has been, to let it become what it will be? Even when it isn't what we hoped for? When it doesn't turn out the way we planned? Are we bold enough to start again? To let erosion perform it’s fine art? To be worn down, washed away, moved somewhere else, pressed and compacted, to be become fluid through fervor and force, to start anew.
Everything solid shifts. A closure is an opening. A beginning is an ending. An ending is another word for change.